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Matriarchy? Patriarchy? (Answer: Kyriarchy)

When I was a little boy I was beaten by men and women. Teachers, parents, friends of my parents, parents of other little boys – just about any adult – would beat me or slap me around casually, sometimes raging with fury, other times just kind of happy slapping for jesus.

Generally I found the men easier to predict, they didn’t seem so outwardly angry as the women. Women hit less often than men, but, and this is a very big but, men usually beat as a result of women’s insistence. Without this virulent insistence I might have been beaten much less.

The school I attended from the age of three up to eleven when I went to the all-male high school, were matriarchies. At times they had a headmaster, but a headmistress was much more usual. They had only two or three male teachers, all the rest were women.Where I went to school in South Africa, Natal School Regulations forbade the striking of ‘any girl’ in any circumstances. So I was beaten because I was a male, at the insistence of women and often in front of girls. I recall incidents where I was reported by girls for teasing, swearing or loosening my tie in the African heat; they wanted to have me beaten. When sent to the headmistress for a beating I had to return to a mixed gender class full of eyes. The boys were professionally interested to see how I had taken it, dispassion being the ideal, and the girls were – what? Perhaps as a woman you might have a better guess than I as to the basis of their interest. Teachers always addressed boys by their surname – “Come out here, McDermott!” Girls were always addressed by their first names and always kindly and respectfully.

I don’t know what you will make of this information, or exactly what I make of it, either. Obviously, the gender-beating I sustained at the hands of women, some of them young and pretty, has deeply affected me. I don’t think its an issue which a woman will easily understand or be able to help me with because so many women feel themselves to be victims. I’m usually uncomfortable in female company, aware of feelings from the past and battling to prevent their driving my present behaviour. I suspect much of the violent behaviour to women by men is driven by what was done to those men by women when they were small and vulnerable. You have said that fathering is responsible for creating violent adults and I agree, but I wonder if you can see how mothering has also been just as destructive. Just wait until your father gets home! There seems to be a belief that matriarchy is more natural and healtheir than the present patriarchy. I think you could be right – if patriarchy is actually more destructive than a matriarchy might be. The problem is that I know, from the matriarchal models of my own experience over years, that women are just as destructive and violent as men and I do not feel safe that you have fully examined that possibility. I’m not insisting I’m right because I have been unable to fully examine this issue as well, but I just don’t feel safe with women in power any more than I do with men. Women are just as crazy, just as destructive, just as badly hurt as men. [personal email address removed]

AM: Thank you for sharing with us your experiences with women in their position as teachers or girls at school. I am very sorry that you suffered so much from their cruelty and I don’t doubt even for a while that things happened in the way you describe them. But I don’t think that gender makes a difference when it goes to cruelty. Active cruelty is the effect of endured violence and perversion in childhood and nothing else. Feminists dislike my statements very much when I write in many books (as the Drama, Banished Knowledge, Breaking Down and others) that the space society gives to man to rage and destroy life with impunity is the war and to women their home where they can do whatever they want to their babies and todlers to teach them to obey. What they do in this way, never controlled, never punished, is to cripple millions of people who will never accuse them of their crimes because every child loves her/ his mother and would never, never put her in troubles. Rather they would hate the whole world or all women, but the own mother must stay protected from their hatred for ever. In this way we turn in a vicious circle of blindness. A brutally beaten child will, as adult, prefer becoming a serial killer to accusing his mother of brutality. And the same is true for crazy dictators who even become “heroes” for whole nations because people learned so early to love and admire the persons who were cruel to them – no matter what they really did.

“I suspect much of the violent behaviour to women by men is driven by
what was done to those men by women when they were small and vulnerable.”

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. This wife-beater apologist shit is not acceptable on any level. “My mommy beat me 30 years ago, so now I can beat adult women while still playing the ‘poor men’ card?” What about the moms who beat their sons? Do they get to blame their abusive behavior on the men in their lives? Where does the buck stop?

In case you weren’t aware, women still make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes doing the same job. We can’t walk down the street without being constantly on alert for rapists and other violent predators. Do you know what it’s like to be physically out-matched by half the population, many of whom would do you harm if given the chance? Out of 44 U.S. presidents, exactly zero have been female. In many parts of the world, pre-pubescent girls are sold into marriages, impregnated, and die in childbirth as their vaginas rip during childbirth.

This isn’t about who’s more oppressed in society; it’s about personal accountability. By blaming women for the violent behaviors of adult men, you’re absolving men of any responsibility. It’s no different than blaming a rape victim for wearing the “wrong clothes”.

Please work on your mommy issues with a therapist before you hurt someone.

SushiBushi

Where in the text did it say he was a wife beater?

And you don’t seem to be aware that the 77 cents bullshit was totally debunked decades ago by the likes of Warren Farrell. But you with your narrow mind are too brainwashed and you are too scared to look for truth.

You can’t walk down the street without being scared of rapists and other violent predators? Wohoo poor you for being paranoid. If you were a male you would be multiple times more prone to being the victim of violent assault. So you should just shut up and be thankful for you being safe,

Do you think a large part of the population wants to physically harm you? Perhaps that is because you come across as a totally ignorent ass*ole? Then you could be lucky for not being a male, because then you surely would have gotten the crap beaten from you by other males.

Why are males physically outmatching females? Why are there in the animal kingdom always the males the ones who got natural weapons like horns and tusks, and not the females? Because females have always loved violent males. Females have bred males to what they are. Female choice. Through millions of years of evolution,

n0b0d1

“always the males the ones who got natural weapons”

There are plenty of animals where the female is the dominant–and not just bugs. You need to watch more animal documentaries.

Calypso_1

Ever read Bloom’s The Lucifer Principle?
It provides significant counter evidence against the standard conceptions of violence among genders and the roles it has in social group evolution.

Is that your version of paradise? Very nice. It looks similar to my version of paradise, except I’d have more windows, like the library below.

Actually, this does look like my current library, except my bookcases are half the height. But the light, plants, furniture, rug, ceiling fan… all there. Bliss.

Calypso_1

That’s just the linguistics reading room.
Lighting is better upstairs.

American Cannibal

Oooo…fancy. But I bet it costs a hellavalot to heat.

n0b0d1

Heat? That’s what the fur rugs and giant bowls of burning oil are for…and the candelabras! (This is like that one Meatloaf video, right? Or are you going more for a NIN-esque “Perfect Drug” thing?)

American Cannibal

Fur rugs and giant bowels of burning oil and candelabras reminds me more of Caligula.

American Cannibal

That’s a good book. Also, The Lucifer Effect by Zimbardo of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Check it out, if you haven’t already.

Calypso_1

Most male ‘characteristics’ are not aspects of adaptive selection but traits associated with sex-hormone differentiation which are pronounced among mammals due to increased gestation and development time.

SushiBushi

Yeah. But what do you think shaped the way the organism is answering to different sex hormones the first place,

Calypso_1

Do you like rope?

n0b0d1

Perhaps you should discuss your feelings with Duncan Mcdermott.

(Good German is not the author of the letter which was written to Alice Miller…this is re-posted from her website; her response is the paragraph in bold. In other words, the author of the words you are offended by, will very likely not be reading your comment.)

Eric_D_Read

That’s rich coming from someone who adheres to an ideology that holds the (usually least powerful) men today responsible for the sins of men who lived between 10,000 and 150 years ago.

Harley Williford

if you can’t feel sympathy then don’t expect any. This man pours out his soul but because he’s a man his suffering is meaningless.

SushiBushi

Female cruelty has been known for long. There are slave owner manuals written in ancient rome on how to organise the slaves most efficiently. Tactics that were later used by american slave owners. There was the common tactic to put a female in charge of other lower ranked male slaves, because females would be more merciless in their cruelty if it served their personal gain,

InfvoCuernos

No shit- if I ever had the choice between a whooping by Mom or Dad, I’d pick Dad every time-Mom would go Ape Shit on you. She broke her hand trying to hit me once-luckily I ducked behind a door at the last second(but then she whooped my ass with her other hand-then drove herself to the hospital-they made women out of tougher stuff than nowadays).

I have never hit a woman either, so I guess that shoots that whole “boys that got beat by women turn into woman beaters” myth to hell.

American Cannibal

So true. Dad spanked me on the ass and it would be over. He never ‘hurt’ me physically. It was more embarrassing than painful. It was like a quick spank and angry yells and then he moved on.

But Mom got crazed, ranting, chasing me around the house with ‘tools’ to drive her point home, i.e. a belt, or broom handle. A few times with a wooden spoon (which didn’t hurt at all, so one had to act hurt).

Mom’s punishments seemed more personal though. She got most pissed whenever she felt threatened or embarrassed. One time, she broke down crying an apology after a really bad & long punishment (awful bleeding welts all over my arm). Admittedly, I did embarrass her in-front of the neighbors for a childish/manipulative prank, but it also forced me to distrust her for awhile after that. I learned to hide my ‘subversive’ acts better until I could get the hell out of the house.

InfvoCuernos

Isn’t that the real lesson? How to not get caught, that’s really what I learned growing up. My Dad told me it was ok to cuss, just don’t let him catch me, or he’d whip my ass, so it taught me that there was a time and a place to cuss, and to pay attention to who is in hearing range.

American Cannibal

Yeah. That is the lesson. Sounds like your dad was cool enough to give you a heads-up about appropriateness of the situation, which is real positive despite the physical punishment. My pop’s was the silent type and failed to share much of anything. Meh. All well…fuck it. I’m over it!

Calypso_1

And what if you are told of an all-seeing god who knows your every thought and that your sins will find you out?

n0b0d1

Just to throw in a little perspective from the reverse, I personally
feared the male parental unit’s corporal punishment more than that from the female parental unit. Both only taught me to distrust adults of either gender.

Harley Williford

thank you so, so much. I’m so tired of the sexist, man shameing on this site so it is very refreshing to see this.

n0b0d1

Trust me, my dear, there are plenty of men who are skilled in the ways of “screwing you in the head” without ever resorting to violence.

Calypso_1

Also, I’m not sure why anyone would think that violence itself does not screw you in the head.